Pangs of Love

W hile I am at work the next day, she calls me. She wants to know whether I've rented a car yet. My youngest brother owns a house on the Island, and we're invited out for the weekend. My mother and I have gone over our plans many times already, so when she starts in now I lose patience in a wink. Rut I catch myself -- with my mother repetition is a necessity, as it is whcn teaching a child to speak. The rental car is my idea. She says we'll save money by taking the train. Rut she keeps forgetting there's three of us traveling -- me, my mother, and my friend Deborah. Once we agree to go in a rental car, she then tells me I should get a small model in order, again, to save money. "I'll ask for one with three wheels," I say. And she says anything's fine, but cheaper is better.

Later the same day, my boss, Kyoto, comes to my office with aproblem. Every time we meet he sizes me up, eyes crawlinq across my body, and lots of sidelong glances. Who is this guy? It's the same going-over I get when I enter a sushi joint, when the chefs with their long knives and blood-red headbands stop work and take my measure, colonizers amused by the native's hunger for their superior culture. Kyoto says a client in the personal-hygiene busi- ness wants a "new and improved" scent for its men's deodorant.

"They want to change Musk 838/Lot No. i914437594I-3e?

He bows his head, chin to chest. "You take care for Kyoyto, okay?" Kyoto says.

I nod, slow and low, as if in mourning. He nods his head. I nod again.

Musk 838/Lot No. i914437594.I-3e. Palm trees and surf; hibachied hotdogs topped with mustard, relish, and a tincture of Musk 838/Lot NO. i9I4437594I-3e. Amanda Miller. Mandy Millstein. She was my love, and I followed her to Los Angeles. Within a year, about the time Sony purchased Columbia Pictures, she fell for someone named Ito, and broke off our engagement. When that happened, my siblings rushed in to fill the void Mandy's leaving left in my life, and decided I should be my newly widowed mother's apartment mate. My mother had grown accustomed to Mandy. She spoke Chinese, a stun- ning Mandarin that she learned at Vassar, and while that wasn't my mother's dialect Mandy picked up enough Cantonese to hold an adult conversation, and what she couldn't bridge verbally she wrote in notes. They conspired together to celebrate Chinese festivals and holidays, making coconut-filled sweet-potato dumplings, lotus-seed cookies, daikon and green onion soup, tiny bowls of monk's food for New Year's Day. Beyond all that, Mandy had a ladylike manner of dressing that appealed to my mother's own vanity, and to her notions of what an American ("If you're going to marry a non-Chinese, she might as well look the part") should be: skirt, nylons, high-heel shoes.

Kyoto's request saddens me. Musk 838/Lot No. i9gI4437594I-3e, a synthetic hybrid of natural deer and mink musks, spiced with a twist of mint, was, and always will be, our special scent. Taken internally, it had an aphrodisiacal effect on Mandy. One night, as was my custom, I had brought samples of our latest flavors and fragrances home from the lab. As usual, Mandy eagerly sniffed the tiny corked vials; when she tried the musk, she said it smelled dirty. I told her that to fully appreciate its essence it needed to come in contact with the heat of one's skin. She, of course, refused to experiment with her own flesh so I volunteered mv hand as she poured. I warned her that this was a concentrate, each drop equal in potency to the glandular secretions of a herd of buck deer. Clearly my warnings unsettled her, because the next thing I know Mandy had dumped the whole works onto my palm. Later that evening, as planned, I made pizza, working the dough with my well-scrubbed hands, but Ivory soap, as it turned out, was no match for the oily compounds in Musk 838/ Lot No. i9I4437594I-3e. The baking pie filled the apartment with a scent reminiscent of horses. But the pizza itself was a sensation, every bite bearing a snootful of joy: tomato sauce that seemed to have fangs, cheese as virile as steak, onions so pungent they ripped our eyes from our heads. "It tastes alive," Mandy said.

"Wild," I said.

"It's the basil," she said.

Her eyes caught mine. I shook my head. "Not basil," I said, "not oregano."

She creased her second slice and dipped her fingertip in the reservoir of orange grease that pooled in the resulting valley. She touched her glistening orange finger to the gap between my eyebrows, then let it slide south down the bridge of my nose, stopping at the flshy tip of my northernmost lip. At that moment I realized we'd been eating Musk 838/Lot NO. i9I4437594I-3e. If it had any toxic properties, it hardly mattered then. Mandy started giggling, as if she were high on grass, and I laughed to keep her company. She drew circles on my cheeks with the orange musk-laced oils. A regular pizza face. She cackled in the manner of chimps, and when I returned the favor and greased her with gleaming polka dots, I got the joke: no doubt I looked as dopey as she did then. After that we spiked our food and beverages with Musk 838/Lot No. i9I4g375g4I-3e whenever Mandy was feeling amorous but needed a jump start.

I wonder how she has managed since she left. When she needs that little extra, does she do the same trick with Ito? Has he noticed that his California rolls smell funny -- not fishy, but gamy like a herd of deer? If Mandy wants to recapture that old magic she had with me, she'll have to act quickly. Kyoto says it's time for a change. The manly scent of musk is no longer manly enough.

It's a sad day for love, Mandy, everywhere.